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Friday, February 24, 2012

How Can Attorney General Greg Zoeller Ethically Defend The Case Of Charlie White's Prosecutors On Appeal?

Ousted Secretary of State Charlie White is looking to the future as he should. The juggling act of the special prosecutors in that Hamilton County courtroom will now get a sharper lens focused on it by appellate judges who take an oath to uphold the state's constitution and laws as White exercises his right to appeal his criminal convictions. The duty falls to the state's Attorney General to defend state prosecutions before the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. There's one big problem here. Greg Zoeller has already filed a brief with the Indiana Supreme Court stating that Charlie White was legally registered to vote at his ex-wife's home. If White was legally registered to vote at his ex-wife's home, he could not have committed at least five of the six felonies of which he was convicted. In his brief, Zoeller's office says:

White was registered in Indiana and was constitutionally and statutorily entitled to vote.

He was also properly registered to vote at the Broad Leaf home. He had properly abandoned all other residences to which he could return. Broad Leaf was also the home of his immediate family because his son lived there. Generally, Broad Leaf was a "non-traditional residence," which election law defines as not fixed or permanent. He intended to live there until he was married and moved to the Overview condominium.

In the sentencing hearing yesterday, Judge Steven Nation said that the trial court found that White had "intentionally defrauded the public by using his ex-wife's home to vote and continuing to take his Fishers Town Council salary after he had moved out of the district." How can Zoeller's office argue on appeal in the Recount Commission case that White was "properly registered to vote" at his ex-wife's house and defend White's criminal convictions based on him being illegally registered to vote at his ex-wife's house? The answer, in short, is that he can't under the rules of professional conduct. If Zoeller believes what his office wrote in that brief in the Recount Commission case, he has a legal obligation to argue on White's behalf in the criminal appeal that these special prosecutors and Judge Nation got the law wrong. Not just a little wrong, but badly wrong. The theft issue over drawing his Fishers Town Council salary for a few month period is a separate matter, but a proper application of Indiana law on that issue should also be resolved in White's favor as well because he stole nothing from Fishers. Judge Nation did not ask White to pay restitution because Fishers' officials communicated to Judge Nation that the town had not been a victim and White owed them nothing.

2 comments:

He can do what ever he wants. When it comes to doing both ends against the middle he wins either way.

His office was supposed to represent the tax payers on a Qui Tam case and backed out and then decided to represent the defendant a state official after they had all the evidence. On top of that they threatened to take action against the Qui Tam filer in Federal Court after the filer had already been placed in front of the AG by the House ethics committee and got told no good deed goes unpunished.

So in the case you write about the leopard has not changed it's colors.

Hell, I want to know how the verdict should not be immediately and automatically set aside for the jury members saying that they convicted because White failed to present a defense.

At the close of the State's case, the jury is required to decide whether the State proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. White's case is utterly irrelevant to the legal sufficiency of the State's case.

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